The Black Country. The name counjours up images of canals, factories, trains, coal, and smoke. That is the way that it used to be. Now, it is nothing more than a larger than average industrial estate, littered with average sized houses.

I was born and raised in a Black Country town called Tipton, a place where people have lived since the Saxons arrived, where the 10th Century Saxon Church (St. Johns) still stands and no-one visits. Originally named after a settler called Tibber, Tibbers' Town over eight hundred years grew up to be a sprawling mass of factories, slums and farms.

Local points of interest are
  • Great Bridge - named after it's most famous export. Great Bridge manufactured Sydney Harbour Bridge.
  • Coneygre Playing Fields - used to be a mine. The mine where Thomas Newcomen built the worls' first steam engine in 1712.
  • The Black Country Living Museum - Marvellous, full of scruffy flat cap wearing old souls, who look like they have just come from an eighteenth century mine. And that's just the visitors.
  • JB's Dudley - stunning. A nightclub that truly deserves it's surrounding area.
    As you may be aware, the West Bromwich Albion Vs. Wolverhampton Wanderers football matches are known as 'The Black Country Derby'. Some people don't think that Wolverhampton is part of the Black Country. I don't. So, just where are the borders?

    The Black Country encapsulates Dudley, Walsall, West Bromwich, Tipton, Wednesbury and Bilston.

    And nowhere else.
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